Why Bitcoin Soars

A cousin, visiting from Maryland, probably spoke for millions of people.

The subject was Bitcoin. And he was right. It’s not ‘real” in a traditional sense. You can’t touch it. You can’t see it. You can’t stack it up and count it out. You can’t put it in your pocket or tip the shoeshine boy with it.

And yet bitcoin…as money…is more real than the dollar. Like other real things, it is a prisoner of time.

Honest money

Day after day, all week long, we’ve been dazzled by the numbers:

‘I made another $8,000 last night,’ said the son with a satisfied air this morning. ‘I’m going to sell some of this one. And it’s so easy. You just go online and you can do it in real time. 24/7.

‘Oh…and I’m up 80% on my Civic tokens.’

‘Huh?’

The young man has been on the bitcoin case from the early days. In fact, he seems to have played a small and inadvertent role in its creation.

‘I was working with Douglas Jackson on the e-gold project,’ he explains.

‘We were trying to create more reliable, more honest money. But it had a weakness: The government could shut it down easily. Which it did.

‘I didn’t know it at the time, but the guy who is thought to be Satoshi Nakamoto, you know, the guy who created bitcoin…said he was watching what we were doing in Florida.

‘When he saw Doug get shut down by the feds, he said he started to think about how you could create a decentralised money system that the government couldn’t shut down.

‘There are some specialised chat rooms with computer nerds who talk about these things. He worked out the key elements of bitcoin on one of them in the early 2000s. And the rest is, well, history.’

14,000% gain

It’s recent history. Bitcoin wasn’t released until 2009 — fewer than 10 years ago. It now has a market cap of $54 billion…and it’s going up almost every day.

‘And people need real money. Yesterday, you wrote about what caused the 21st century to be such a dud. You focused on time. But you could just as well have focused on how the feds’ fake-money system forces people into so many win-lose deals.

‘That’s how the Deep State got so big. It has access to almost unlimited funding… And that’s why we waste so much money on wars and stupid regulations — because we don’t know how much money we really have.

‘If your savings appear to be unlimited, you may as well waste them. In fact, the concept of “waste” makes no sense if there is no limit on money. And since we know there is a limit on real resources — time and money — we also know that today’s dollar can’t be real.

‘That’s why the cryptos are moving up so much. It’s limited, real money. It’s the money people actually want and need.

‘Overnight, NEO went up about 20%. In less than 24 hours. One of the other coins I have went up 43%. It’s wild.

‘I don’t follow this carefully enough myself to know what to buy. Mostly, I just take Teeka Tiwari’s advice [Teeka is an analyst who works with our research group in Florida]. He recommended NEO at 13 cents. It’s now at $23. That’s about a 14,000% gain. It sounds ridiculous. But that’s what’s happening in this crypto world.

‘And now the insiders are catching on,’ our expert continued.

‘Fidelity is reporting bitcoin prices on its account statements. Goldman Sachs is making predictions about it, too; it says it expects bitcoin to hit $3,900 this year. And it’s offering bitcoin analysis to its clients. I don’t know how in the world they can do that… It’s pure guesswork as near as I can figure.

‘Just this week, Vladimir Putin’s government announced a $100 million project in the bitcoin space. It was of “strategic importance.”

Wait. Of course! The feds will use their fake money to buy real money. Why not? They have nearly unlimited buying power. They can buy as much cryptocurrency as they want — and who will care?

‘There is a cap on the bitcoin money supply of 21 million bitcoins. Unless the system blows up, someone is going to own them. So it’s crazy for central banks to ignore them. This could be the world’s next monetary base.

‘Of course, it’s still early days. Like the early days of the automobile, we don’t know which of these jalopies will survive.

‘And by the way, I read the feedback you’re getting from your readers. One objection was that bitcoin won’t work when the electricity goes off.

‘That’s true. But imagine the person who says he won’t buy a car because he’s afraid gasoline may not be available someday.

‘Of course, things go wrong. In the early days of the automobile, there were hundreds of competing auto companies. Most of them went out of business.

‘The cars didn’t work very well. They were uncomfortable. Dangerous. With very limited range. And the roads were horrible. And anyone who drove one was considered very daring.

‘But the automobile was such an important innovation, it was unstoppable.

‘That’s the way it’s going with cryptocurrencies. This is an idea whose time has come. They’re here to stay.’

Bill Bonner

Since founding Agora Inc. in 1979, Bill Bonner has found success and garnered camaraderie in numerous communities and industries. A man of many talents, his entrepreneurial savvy, unique writings, philanthropic undertakings, and preservationist activities have all been recognized and awarded by some of America's most respected authorities.

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